Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-four
Cross
I just keep making mistakes. One after another, I fuck up and fuck up and fuck up.
I can't afford any more fuck ups. Especially with Genie.
I didn't mean to fuck up this time. Up until now, my mistakes have all been fairly willful, but this time it was a genuine mistake.
All I could see when Parker walked out of the forest was him from ten years ago.
The situation was different, but still enough the same that it scared me.
She'll understand when I explain it. She has to.
I just have to catch her. And, of course, my wolf isn't coming to my rescue.
Why would he? He's as sick of my mistakes as the rest of us are.
“Genie!” I yell, but she doesn't slow down.
I can see her running in the distance. Her gate is off balance and adds to how awful this specific situation is.
She's hurt. She got hurt watching over Parker.
Then I ignored her in favor of Parker and I'm so stupid.
He was fine, I was the one reacting poorly to what I was seeing.
He even tried to stop me, but I didn't listen. I never listen.
She's limping. Guilt pulls at me but I ignore it for now.
If she's limping, she's slow and I can catch her.
She's about a hundred feet ahead. I can close that distance.
Forcing my legs to move faster, pump harder, I pick up speed until the distance between us starts to shrink.
It closes slowly at first, but after I work into momentum I eat up the ground in a blur until I'm suddenly only a few feet away.
She turns on me, snarling. She was just about to slip into a thicket when I caught up to her. Her sides heave with each panting breath she takes.
“Easy, baby,” I croon, holding up my hands, palms out. “Easy.”
She backs up against the dense foliage, unwilling to look away from me.
“Let's just breathe, okay?” I say softly. “We can do that, can't we?”
I take a step closer and she growls, eyes glowing in the dim light. I have to get close to her. Just close enough to touch. Then it will be alright.
“Easy, okay? I'm not going to hurt you.”
Her growl turns deadly and I stop moving.
“Genie,” I call again. “I need to talk to you. I need to explain what happened back there. Please, baby. Come back and talk to me.”
The wolf in front of me quiets but her lips stay curled. It's okay. She's going to shift, she just needs a minute to take back control. I step forward again, slowly, and reach out a hand, not to touch but to comfort. “Easy. I'm here. It's okay.”
She lunges at me and sinks her teeth into my forearm. She jerks her head, ripping skin and flesh and I clamp my jaws shut to keep from screaming. Screaming won't help this. “Stop,” I grit out as gently as I can. “Let go.”
She only releases her jaws enough to get a better, deeper hold before leaning hard and twisting and taking me to the ground.
I roll with her. If she lands on top of me, she's going to either gut me or tear my face off.
We roll a few times until I'm finally able to gain enough leverage to stop us with my body covering hers.
She's a tangle of snapping teeth and ripping claws and every time I get a hold on one sharp bit, another comes at me.
I keep saying silly shit like you have to stop now and Genie, baby, stop but she isn't stopping. She's not going to, either.
“Goddammit, stop,” I bark, throwing the strongest command I'm capable of into the words.
She stops moving.
Holy shit.
“Shift,” I command. “Now.”
Slowly, painstakingly, she shifts. It is completely unnerving to feel someone shift forms underneath of me. I feel every snap of tendon, every pop of bone as if it was my own. When it's over she looks up at me with the most horrible, lost look I've ever seen and starts to cry.
“Shh,” I hush, pushing her hair back from her face. “It's okay. It's okay. You're alright.”
“No,” she sobs. “I'm not. Let me go, Drew.”
I lean down and kiss her forehead and she cries harder.
“Just stop,” she sniffs. “Stop making it worse. Just let me go.”
I put my hands on either side of her and press my weight against her.
I should probably feel at least a little guilty about the display of dominance, but I don't. “I can't. I'm not going to let you go, baby.
Now or ever. You can be mad at me if you want to, but I'm never letting go. I need you to listen to me, okay?”
She shoves against me, but either she's exhausted or my command is still holding. “I'm tired of listening to you. I want to go home. I want this to be over.”
“I'll take you home, okay? I'll take you myself, but I'm staying there, too. Wherever you are is where I'll be. But I need to explain what happened back there. Can you please listen to me?”
She looks away from me but doesn't say anything else. So I start talking.
“About ten years ago, when Parker and I were still teenagers, people tried to hurt him.
He's younger than I am, right?” I start moving my hands down her body, slowly and carefully, looking for damage as I talk.
“Just a couple years, but that's enough sometimes.
He was smaller too for a while. He was an easy target and people came after him because of me, or that's how it started.
I don't know if you realize this or not, but Parker has a little bit of a shitty attitude sometimes and it has gotten him into trouble before. And because he and I had a relationship, other wolves assumed he was fair game and tried to take him from me. Romantically.”
She winces when I touch her upper arm and shoulder.
“Does that hurt?” I ask. “Right there?”
She nods.
“Okay. We'll get it looked at. So, there was this wolf from another pack. Billings.” Her lips curl into brand new snarl at the name.
“Yeah,” I agree. “Exactly. He wanted Parker.
He always wanted Parker. It had nothing to do with me.
Well, Parker didn't want him and he made it very publicly clear that he didn't want him.
Billings was embarrassed, naturally, but he was also angry.
He and a few of his friends cornered Parker at one of the summits and tried to.
.. hurt him. I got there just in time. If I had gotten there just a few moments later than I did, he would have taken Parker from me in every way possible.
I attacked and did a good job of it. Billings and one of his guys ran away, but the other friend was all over Parker while I was fighting the other two.
I pulled him off of Parker. I hurt him, Genie.
I hurt him so bad. It took a few days, but he didn't survive.
I don't feel bad about it. Not then and not now. But Billings has held onto that grudge and he tries to take it out on Parker.”
I shift my weight so I'm not so much pinning her down as I am laying with her. My body is still pressing into hers, but it's softer now, comfortable. She isn't trying to get away.
“That's all I could see for a minute when you brought him back,” I continue.
“I saw him back then, small and overpowered.
I saw the damage I did to the other wolf.
I was so scared, baby. I couldn't see anything else.
I'm so sorry. I should have seen you. I should have taken care of you.
But I was so scared and stuck. It took a second for me to pull myself out of the memory. I'm so sorry.”
She's mostly stopped crying. She still has the snubs, but I think it's going to be okay. She takes a shuddering breath and allows herself to fully relax. “You should have seen me.”
“I should have,” I agree.
“I wanted him to be safe,” she says thickly. “They were hunting him. I tore Billings's ear off. I hate him.”
“Me too,” I say. “Fuck that guy.”
She nods. “The staff is going to make me leave now.”
“We weren't staying anyway,” I tell her. “Let's go home.”
She shakes her head. “What does that even mean?”
“Home. Wherever you want it to be. That's where we're going.”
Her brows pinch together. “Drew. You don't even know me. And you have a pack to tend.”
I bend down to brush her nose with mine. “My pack will be okay while I take care of my mate. My dad is still Alpha. He can handle things until I'm ready to step up.”
“I'm not your mate,” she says. “Not yet.”
“I'll take care of that, too. We'll figure everything out.”
She pulls her lip between her teeth.
“What?” I ask her.
“What about Parker?”
“He's part of we. Can you live with that?”
She looks at me for a long minute. “I can live with a lot of things.”
Parker is waiting for us on one of the benches in front of the entrance of the residential hall where the suite is.
His hair is pointing in every direction from the way he keeps raking his fingers through it.
He stands up when he sees us coming. Genie is wearing my shirt.
Nudity might be common among wolves, but I wasn't letting her walk across the grounds bare-assed naked.
I'm still too worked up and touchy to control my temper if we were to come across someone who looked at her a little too long.
“Yeah?” Parker asks, brows high as he looks back and forth between us.
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Thank fuck,” he sighs. “I made Alpha Tinsley reset the code, but he had already seen Billings. Listen, don't be upset, but I told him that we, all three of us, were leaving in the morning and to give us this suite for the night if he didn't want either me or you to go on a rampage.”
Genie snorts, and everything lifts. The stress, the turmoil, the guilt, all of it. She laughed at Parker and now I can breathe.
“We can get our things in the morning,” I tell them both. “We'll decide where we're going after a shower and some rest. Tonight has been completely exhausting. Okay?”
They both nod at me and Parker leads us to the suite and puts in the code. It hasn't even been cleaned since we left. Our scents are still heavy in the air and I breathe them in deeply. This is what home will smell like, wherever it ends up being.